I asked three chefs — two restaurant and one private — what knife set they would buy if they had $100 or less. None of them said the big block sets with 14 pieces. All of them gave some version of the same answer: buy three knives, not twenty.

Here is what they told me, plus the specific knives they named.

The Only Three Knives You Need

1. 8-inch chef’s knife. This does 90% of kitchen cutting. Vegetables, meat, herbs, everything. This is where you spend your money.
2. 3.5-inch paring knife. Small work: peeling, coring, trimming, detail cuts.
3. Serrated bread knife. Bread, tomatoes, anything with a tough skin and soft interior.

Everything else — the boning knife, the cleaver, the carving knife, the santoku — is nice to have. You will use them maybe twice a year. Skip them until you actually need them.

The Picks

Best Chef’s Knife Under $50: Victorinox Fibrox Pro 8-Inch

Every chef I asked named this one. It has been the top pick from America’s Test Kitchen for over a decade. The handle is textured plastic — not pretty, but grippy even when your hands are wet. The steel is soft enough to sharpen easily, hard enough to hold an edge through a week of home cooking. About $45.

Best Paring Knife: Victorinox 3.25-Inch

Same brand, same handle, same logic. About $9. Buy two.

Best Bread Knife: Mercer Culinary Millennia 10-Inch

Sharp, comfortable, under $20. The offset handle keeps your knuckles off the cutting board when you are slicing through the bottom of a loaf.

Total for all three: about $75. Add a honing steel ($15) and you are at $90 for a setup that outperforms most $200 block sets.